America’s favorite drug

Sugar is everywhere. Eighty percent of supermarket foods contain it—and purportedly “savory” foods often contain more sugar than sweet treats like ice cream. Whole-wheat bread can have a teaspoon of sugar per slice; Heinz tomato ketchup contains 22.8 percent sugar, twice as much as Coca-Cola. As we swamp our bodies with sugar, we only become more addicted. A 2016 study in Nature Neuroscience suggested that sugar hijacks the brain by triggering its reward system, pushing the body to ask for more and more. Sugar might even be more addictive than recreational drugs, says cardiovascular research scientist James DiNicolantonio. “When you look at animal studies comparing sugar to cocaine, even when you get the rats hooked on intravenous cocaine, once you introduce sugar, almost all of them switch to the sugar.”